You open the dashboard and honestly, it’s a lot. There are graphs everywhere, tiny red and green numbers flashing like a glitchy stock market ticker, and about fifty different sidebar options that all seem to do the same thing but don't. Most people start their journey of learning how to use semrush by clicking randomly until they find a pretty chart, export a PDF for their boss, and call it a day. That's a mistake. You're paying way too much money for this tool to just use it as a glorified rank tracker.
Semrush is a beast. It’s an ecosystem. If you treat it like a simple keyword tool, you’re basically buying a Ferrari to drive it to the mailbox. I’ve spent years digging through the guts of this software—back when it was just a tiny Firefox extension called SEOQuake—and the truth is that 90% of the value is hidden in about three specific workflows.
Why Most People Fail at Keyword Research
Stop starting with your own ideas. It sounds counterintuitive, right? You think, "I sell artisanal goat cheese, so I should search for goat cheese." Wrong. When you're figuring out how to use semrush, the very first thing you should do is look at who is already beating you.
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The Domain Overview tool is your best friend here. Don't type in your own URL. Type in your biggest, meanest competitor. Look at their "Top Organic Keywords." This isn't just a list; it's a roadmap of exactly what Google thinks their site is good at. You'll often find they're ranking for things you never even considered. Maybe they aren't just ranking for "goat cheese," but for "low lactose cheese for toddlers" or "charcuterie board pairings 2026."
Once you have those seeds, head over to the Keyword Magic Tool. This is the powerhouse. The trick here isn't just looking at volume. High volume usually means high competition, and unless you're a massive media conglomerate, you aren't ranking for "shoes" today. You need to filter by Keyword Difficulty (KD%).
Try this: filter for a KD under 30%. These are the "low-hanging fruit." Then—and this is the part people miss—filter by Intent. If you want sales, look for "Commercial" or "Transactional" intent. If you just want traffic, go for "Informational." If you write a "How-to" guide for someone who is clearly ready to buy with a credit card in their hand, you've already lost the sale. Match the content to the intent. It's that simple, yet everyone messes it up.
The Backlink Audit: A Necessary Evil
Backlinks are still the currency of the web, whether we like it or not. But here’s the thing: bad links can actually hurt you. Semrush has a Backlink Audit tool that is notoriously sensitive. It might tell you that 10% of your links are "toxic."
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Don't panic.
Google is much better at ignoring spam than it used to be. You don't need to disavow every single weird link from a site called top-best-cool-links.ru. However, you should look for patterns. If you see a sudden spike of 5,000 links from a single domain you’ve never heard of, that’s a problem. Use the audit tool to keep an eye on your "Authority Score." It’s a proprietary metric—Google doesn't actually use it—but it’s a solid proxy for how much "weight" your site carries in the eyes of an algorithm.
If you want to grow, use the Backlink Gap tool. Put your site in, then put in four competitors. Semrush will show you exactly which sites are linking to all of them but not you. These are your prime outreach targets. They clearly like your niche; they just don't know you exist yet.
Technical SEO is Where the Money is Hidden
You can have the best content in the world, but if your site takes six seconds to load on a 4G connection in a basement, Google will bury you. The Site Audit in Semrush is basically a health checkup. It crawls your site just like a search engine would.
Look for the "Core Web Vitals" section. This is a real Google ranking factor. It measures things like "Largest Contentful Paint" (how fast the big stuff loads) and "Cumulative Layout Shift" (whether buttons jump around while the page is loading).
Common Technical Traps
- Duplicate Meta Descriptions: It feels minor, but it confuses the hell out of crawlers.
- Broken Internal Links: Every 404 error is a dead end for a bot. Fix them.
- Missing Alt Text: Not just for SEO, but for accessibility. Don't be that person.
- Large Images: Honestly, just run your photos through a compressor before uploading. Your server will thank you.
I usually set my site audits to run weekly. It’s a great way to catch "SEO drift"—those tiny errors that creep in when you’re busy posting new content and forget to check if your old plugins are breaking things.
Content Marketing and the SEO Writing Assistant
This is where Semrush gets a bit "Big Brother," and I love it. If you’re struggling with how to use semrush to actually write better, the SEO Writing Assistant (SWA) is a game changer. You can't just "stuff" keywords anymore. That died in 2012.
The SWA looks at the top 10 results for your target keyword and analyzes why they are winning. It looks at their readability, their tone of voice, and—most importantly—their LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords. These are words that naturally appear around your main topic. If you're writing about "poker," Google expects to see words like "chips," "dealer," "fold," and "blind." If those words are missing, Google thinks your article is fluff.
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Don't treat the SWA score like a video game where you need a 100/100. A score of 80 is usually plenty. If you try to hit 100, your writing will end up sounding like a robot wrote it, and users will bounce immediately. Write for humans first. Optimize for bots second.
Tracking Your Wins (and Losses)
The Position Tracking tool is addictive. It’s tempting to check it every morning with your coffee. Don't. Search rankings fluctuate wildly day to day based on data centers, personalization, and even the time of day.
Instead, look at the Trends. Are you generally moving up over a 30-day period? That’s what matters. Set up "Sensors" to see if there's a massive Google algorithm update happening. If your rankings drop but the "Semrush Sensor" is screaming that the whole internet is experiencing high volatility, it’s probably not your fault. Just stay the course.
One of the most underutilized features is the My Reports section. If you're working for a client or showing data to a manager, don't just send them a link to the dashboard. Create a custom PDF. Drag and drop the charts that actually matter—usually traffic, conversions, and top-performing pages. Hide the technical jargon that will only confuse them.
Real Talk: The Learning Curve
Look, you’re going to feel overwhelmed. That’s normal. Semrush has grown into a massive platform that tries to do everything from social media scheduling to PPC competitive intelligence. You don't need to use all of it.
Start with the Keyword Magic Tool and the Site Audit. Get those two right, and you're already ahead of 70% of your competition. As you get more comfortable, start playing with the Content Analyzer or the Social Tracker.
The biggest mistake is paying the monthly subscription fee and only logging in once a month. SEO isn't a "set it and forget it" thing. It’s a garden. You have to weed it, water it, and occasionally yell at it. Semrush is just the high-end gardening kit that makes the job easier.
Actionable Steps to Take Right Now
- Run a Site Audit. Fix any "Errors" (red) immediately. Ignore the "Notices" (blue) for now if you're short on time.
- Identify your Top 3 Competitors. Put them into Domain Overview and see which keywords they've gained or lost in the last 30 days.
- Find your "Striking Distance" Keywords. Go to your organic research tab, filter for positions 11-20. These are pages that are on page two of Google. A few small tweaks to the content or a couple of internal links can push these to page one for a massive traffic boost.
- Check your Mobile Usability. More than half of your traffic is likely on a phone. If Semrush says your mobile site is slow, believe it.
- Set up a Weekly Report. Have it emailed to you every Monday morning so you can see the health of your site without even logging in.
Success in SEO doesn't happen overnight. It’s a slow burn. But by leveraging the data inside Semrush, you aren't just guessing—you're making moves based on what the math says. That’s how you win in 2026.